Welcome to the Rotary Club of Aurora's weekly eBulletin. This eBulletin shares events from the week and provides information on upcoming events and speakers. Let us know how we can continue to provide information for our members and friends.
Last Week & This Week in Rotary
Last Week - There was no meeting for most of us last week due to the "Bomb Cyclone" also named Ulmer. A few hardy(crazy) folks made there way in to Heather Gardens. Kudos to Jim Bickford, Pete Traynor, Regina Edmondson, Omar Montgomery, Jeff Krommendyk, Ryan Turbyfill, Bill Wiggins, Craig Wagner for illustrating true Rotarian dedication.
This Week
Ashaun's sister passed away suddenly. Memorial service is Sunday, March 24th @ 10 am
Location: Horan & McConaty, 11150 East Dartmouth Avenue (At, S Parker Rd, Aurora, CO 80014. Celebration of life to follow after at Talon's Reach clubhouse
Black Hawk Trip - Reminder to sign up for Black Hawk trip(4/6) if you are interested by 4/1. If we don't have enough interested parties this will be cancelled.
Rangeview Interact students visited: 6 attended
They do a ton!
Welcome BBQ each summer; RYLA; Can-o-treating; salvation army bell ringing; flower power; high line canal clean up; international: goat purchase; & park fundraising dinner!
NHS: donated $1k to RTHP
Interact Italian dinner: $7k raised!
Invited us to help with canal clean up:
March 30, meet at 8 am at the central library branch. Club & family are invited to join!
Red Badge - Congrats to BillHolen for receipt of his Red Badge. Welcome Jim to the club...glad to have you.
Rangeview Interact Club with President Jim and members Regina and Linda.
Rangeview NHS donation to Red-tailed Hawk Park
Red Badge recipient Jim Holden
Red-Tailed Hawk Park
Lots of activity on the Park this week. Ground breaking activities and celebrations happened on Monday, March 18th. Several members of Rotary attended along with Ashaun's family, council members, news crews and many more city officials. Park donations are now at $221K.
On behalf of Pete, please donate to the park. need additional fund to get to $1k
Buy a t-shirt. $20/shirt. Design on front created by Ashaun's grandfather. Its really cool & a soft shirt :)
Bracelets: the City of Aurora employees (in PACE program) are selling red bracelets (livestrong style) that say Ahsuan's wish for $3
Tracy Young spoke on behalf of the city. She is in Planning, Design, Construction for the City of Aurora and was very thankful and excited for the park.
Construction contractor selected: Cooper Construction. Owner based in Texas came up for groound breaking. They really wanted to win the bid & are donating $50k in profit back to the project. Owner's family member just had a wish granted by Make A Wish.
Ground breaking was awesome! Park is now scheduled to be done in July this summer!
Jason Brinkley from Great Outdoors Colorado was our speaker on Wednesday. One of the original communities with GOCO was in Aurora. The North East Metro Coalition can reach 42K kids at Rocky Mountain Arsenal. GOCO invests a portion of Colorado Lottery proceeds to help preserve and enhance the state's parks, trails, wildlife, rivers, and open spaces. Our independent board awards competitive grants to local governments and land trusts, and makes investments through Colorado Parks and Wildlife. Created by voters in 1992, GOCO has committed more than $1.2 billion in lottery proceeds to more than 5,200 projects in all 64 counties without any tax dollar support.
In the years ahead, GOCO's work will be guided by a strategic plan with three primary goals:
PROTECT more urban and rural land for people and wildlife, notably once-in-a-lifetime, large-scale projects.
CONNECT people to the outdoors by increasing bike and pedestrian access in communities across Colorado and filling gaps in important trail systems.
INSPIRE more kids and their families to explore and take care of our great outdoors by addressing the growing disconnect between youth and nature.
As the cornerstone of our strategic plan, GOCO created the Inspire Initiative to encourage youth and their families to connect to the outdoors by establishing places for kids and families to play, by providing culturally relevant programs that build off of one another, and by creating pathways to outdoor stewardship jobs and leadership roles.
Across the state in 15 Generation Wild communities, hard-working local coalitions are bringing projects to life using a community-led, youth-driven, collaborative approach to creating equitable access to the outdoors. This innovative framework is being looked to as a national model, and each coalition’s approach will serve as examples to other rural, urban, suburban, or mountain communities across the country. To amplify the Inspire Initiative’s message and help it achieve its goals, a communications program called Generation Wild (https://generationwild.com/ ) was launched in 2017. Follow the movement on Instagram and Facebook. Jason referenced a program "100 things you should do before you are 12"...see link for the list and those you haven't done...get them on your bucket list!! https://generationwild.com/ .
Thanks Jason for all this great information and helping get more kids outside.
